“No, no, of course not. I rejoice to find that you have so good and powerful a friend in—Miss Carr. She must be—a truly good—woman.”
“She’s everything that’s good and beautiful and kind,” I cried, bursting into raptures about her. “I’m to have books and to go there every week, and she trusts to me to try and succeed well in my new life. Oh, Hallett, you can’t think how I love her.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder and gazed with a strange light in his eyes upon my eager face.
“That’s right,” he said. “Yes—love her, and never give her cause to blush for her kindness to you, my boy.”
He sat listening to me eagerly as I went on telling him her words, describing her home, everything I could think of, but the one subject tabooed, and of that I gave no hint, while he, poor fellow, sat drinking in what was to him a poisoned draught, and I unwittingly kept on adding to his pain.
“I’m only afraid of one thing,” I said with all a boy’s outspoken frankness.
“And what is that, Antony?”
“I’m afraid that when she is married to Mr Lister—”
His hand seemed to press my shoulder more tightly.
“Yes,” he said in a whisper, “she is to be married to Mr Lister.”